Earth Island News

Nature in the City

In
addition to its natural beauty, San Francisco is well known for
environmental activism, it is the headquarters to numerous Earth Island
projects and other organizations on the cutting edge of global
ecological advocacy. However, most of the city’s organizations focus on
places other than San Francisco. When the average global citizen
contemplates the city’s natural beauty, s/he likely considers the views
of the ocean, or imagines a visit to Yosemite or Muir Woods.

Peter Brastow

The
fact is that San Francisco, the heavily urbanized northern tip of the
peninsula itself, is resplendent with biodiversity and scenic natural
areas. Nature in the City is dedicated to the conservation,
restoration, and stewardship of the city’s indigenous natural heritage.

The Franciscan bioregion – the mostly urbanized landscape
between the San Francisco International Airport and the Golden Gate
Bridge – still contains upwards of 60 areas of native habitat. These
truly special areas harbor well over a dozen different ecological
communities, five federally listed endangered plants, and seven
federally listed endangered animals. From the Presidio’s Raven’s
manzanita (the location of which is kept secret because only one
individual survives in the wild), to the Mission blue butterfly, whose
habitat is confined to Twin Peaks, San Bruno Mountain, and just two
other locations, San Francisco’s rare and endangered species are just
barely hanging on in a fragmented network of urban natural areas.

San
Francisco’s natural areas are also a chaotic patchwork of political
jurisdictions. Some parks and preserves are better off, such as the
Presidio, managed by the Presidio Trust and the National Park Service.
Like other sites of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA),
the Presidio benefits from tremendous community involvement and a
successful public-private partnership, the dedicated and supportive
relationship between the nonprofit Golden National Parks Conservancy
and the GGNRA. Within the City of San Francisco, the Recreation and
Park Department has a Natural Areas Program (though underfunded),
charged with management and stewardship of the biodiversity of 30
natural areas.

Other City-owned lands, however, have no
dedicated natural resources management budget or funding and are in
serious danger of further degra-dation from invasive weeds, human uses, and a general lack of public awareness of the land’s natural value.

Nature
in the City has been working with many jurisdictions to help these
agencies engage the community in stewardship. In 2007, the organization
will increase local ecological advocacy to include, for example,
working with the San Francisco Fire Department (which owns rich natural
lands on Twin Peaks) and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
(which owns the best coastal sage scrub habitat in the city). Finally,
some parcels of San Francisco’s remnant natural lands are still in
private or military ownership. These include parts of Bayview Hill,
Twin Peaks, the Brotherhood Way native woodlands, Hunter’s Point, and
Yerba Buena Island.

Nature in the City collaborates with many
other local ecological organizations to work for the conservation of
these special natural places. We recognize that the whole of the city
is habitat. Our vision includes encouraging people to take care of
their own little patch of San Francisco via backyard habitat
conservation and restoration. We also want to the restore wildlife
corridors in heavily urbanized districts, even when the full
restoration of native habitat in such neighborhoods may be elusive.

But
foremost, we must conserve, restore, and care for our 60-plus
still-natural habitats. These special areas are the biological and
ecological reserves, the local genetic memories, of San Francisco’s own
original nature. If we don’t sustain this biodiversity and network of
habitats, then we won’t have much left to restore in our backyards.

One
might call our local urban natural area conservation campaign a type of
“homeland security.” After all, the word “ecology” comes from the Greek
oikos, meaning “home.” We need to
secure our natural habitats for the local native flora, fauna, and
fungi, as well as for ourselves, for our renewed connection to nature
and deepened sense of place in the naturally beautiful City by the Bay.

For more information about our Franciscan Land Conservation Campaign, please call (415) 564-4107 or go to www.natureinthecity.org.